Harvey Brown, "The Meaning of Probability in Physics"

Time: Wed Apr 25, 2018, 12:00PM -
2:00PM

Location: 1140 Flanner Hall

Harvey Brown, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy of Physics at Oxford University and Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, presents on his research project, "The Meaning of Probability in Physics," to an interdisciplinary group of scholars, artists, and scientists comprised of fellows, guest faculty and students. His previous teaching position was at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil. He specializes in the foundations of modern physics, mainly quantum mechanics, relativity theory (special and general), thermal physics and the role of symmetries in physics. He is also interested in climate change and the role of forests therein.

Professor Brown is the author of Physical Relativity. Spacetime Structure from a Dynamical Perspective (2005), co-winner of the 2006 Lakatos Award in Philosophy of Science. He has published over sixty journal papers and book chapters on diverse issues in the philosophy of physics and has co-edited two collections of essays related to the foundations of quantum field theory.

Professor Brown’s research has been supported by grants from the Leverhulme Trust, the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Board in the UK. He has had visiting fellowships at the Departments of Philosophy and Physics at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Ontario; the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Science; and the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna. In 2007 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy and was President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science from 2007 to 2009.